Theory of strongly saturated double-resonance line shapes in arbitrary angular momentum states of molecules

Abstract

We calculate the steady-state probe absorption line-shape function for a strongly driven, Zeeman-degenerate molecular system. The probe laser is treated to lowest order while the pump laser is dealt with to all orders. We obtain the probe line shape for the cases of parallel and perpendicular linear polarization of the two lasers. As expected, the effects of M degeneracy, as well as differences due to the relative laser polarizations, are most pronounced when Doppler broadening is not important. However, even in the presence of large Doppler broadening we find a narrowing of the population hole by including the Zeeman degeneracy and a further narrowing if perpendicular laser polarizations are used.